Cheap and cheerful

Rating: Null/10 (24 February 2003)

Big budget horror films do have the great asset of allowing you to watch A-list film stars being gutted like fish, preferably after whimpering in a very embarrassing fashion. Apart from that, they are generally rubbish and usually the biggest star survives which always leaves a bad taste in the mouth. 28 Days Later has neither stars nor a budget, so that makes for a promising start.

After a short prologue showing a terrible virus being released we go forward 28 days to find London virtually deserted, with no congestion charge in sight, bar roaming bunches of psychotic zombies who are affected by particularly bad red eye. The only hope a small group of survivors have is a recorded message from Manchester promising salvation. So they take their chances and head north.

Thanks to some canny traffic marshalling and a shooting schedule that would make reality TV producers weep, the film opens with some startling scenes of a lone survivor wandering around empty London streets. The same trick was used in New York in Vanilla Sky but the graininess of the footage combined with the non-American surroundings make the sequence seem more powerful and unsettling.

Whilst the visuals do look murky and chunky at times the decision to use digital video leads to a greater sense of immediacy in the film, without ever sinking to reality TV clichés. The characters still walk into dark enclosed spaces (why do they never learn?), but we are not over burdened with fatuous sub plots or laboured back stories. The deftness of the writing makes it seem a tragedy that Alex Garland can no longer drag him away from his X-box long enough to write a shopping list let alone a new novel. He could at least have got a PS2 with the amount he has earnt.

The film could be tagged as a consolidation for Danny Boyle, whose reputation has stalled since Trainspotting. however as good as this well executed genre fare is, it never tracends it's origins and smacks of great talent merely passing the time.